Happy Halloween!

This is the whole trick-0r-treatin' gang. My kids, Sierra, and our good friends/neighbors, the Cancienne's. We also had Grandma Charlotte with us, who was so fun and such a great help! Happy Halloween everybody!

My new family picture :)

(above)

My friend Tricia came over tonight for an Activity Day's meeting. Afterwards we were all checking out each others family blog. She found these cute family stickers that you can make at pyzam.com. It is so fun! Thanks Tricia!

Christmas in October!

Christmas came early at our house! Last night the kids got to open up an early present. Can you tell that they were a little excited?!

Man, these kids grow too fast! All three of the girls had been wearing high waters :)

And....... they also got special gift certificates......
Yep!!! The Carmack kids and the Carmack mom will be in California for Thanksgiving. We are ALL so excited. The girls were jumping up and down and screaming. Miles wanted to get on the airplane and go to Nan's house right now! He threw a fit when it was bedtime. He kept yelling "No, I go Nan's house. I go Nan's house." He doesn't understand all this "just a few more week's" stuff. We can't wait to see all our California peeps!

***sorry about the bad pictures! The camera battery died right when it was time for "Christmas" so, I had to use my cell phone camera. :(

a good pic of my little husky

Last night I was looking at Joy's Myspace and I found this picture she had of Miles. I love how it shows his eye color so good. Actually, I think that Kaidee took this picture when we were in CA this summer. I remember her running around with Joy's camera taking pictures of everybody. =)Good job Kaidee! And thanks Joy!

Online Family Game Night

Me and my mom and Letti had a fun games night last night! Mom killed us the first two games and then I barely won on the last game. It was so much fun! We were chatting the whole time too. One of the things I miss the most is our big fat family game night. If anyone else would like to play just let us know. :)

Crack-up

I know that I sent a lot of you this video but, oh well, here it is again. :) Miles was cracking up when we were watching America's Funniest Home Videos. I love a good hearty baby laugh!

Our Neighborhood FHE.

Last night I hosted FHE for our neighborhood ward families. I thought we all needed to get to know each other better, so we are going to start doing this every couple of months or so. Our activity last night was making "BOO" bags for our neighbors. Each family brought a bag of candy and I provided the bags and the "boo" supplies. The kids had so much fun with this.

Miles and Camryn weren't too interested in the bags when they figured out they didn't get to eat the candy. They would rather read a book.
This is the new recipe I found when I had some sweet potatoes I didn't know what to do with. Yum! Much better than that marshmallow topped Thanksgiving dish! :)
Sweet Potato Bread

1 1/2 c. sugar

1/2 c. veg. oil

2 eggs

1 3/4 c. flour

1 t. baking soda

1/4 t. salt

1/2 t. cinnamon

1/2 t. pumpkin pie spice

1/3 c. water

1 c. cooked and mashed sweet potatoes

Combine sugar and oil; beat well. Add eggs and beat. In separate bowl, combine flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and pumpkin pie spice. Beat flour mixture into egg mixture alternately with the water. Add sweet potatoes and mix well.

Bake at 350 - in a loaf pan for about 1 hour

- I used a cake pan and baked it for about 30 min.

You can eat it plain or dusted with powdered sugar. I topped mine with homemade cream cheese frosting. (There are veggies in there... that makes it healthy, right?!)

...and a little closet hideaway too.

This is in Livee and Zoe's closet. It is kind of deep. So it made the perfect little area for their dolls. I added a basket of books and a pillow, and they love to go in there and hide out sometimes.

Zoe & Liv's Room

This room is not quite finished yet. Zoe and Livee wanted a beach room, we are working with stuff we already have, so it is going to be more of a beachy cottagey room. It is pretty boring right now. I am planning on making an awning type thing to go over the closet door, kind of like an old-timey changing room that you always see in old beach movies. (that was a really long confusing sentence. sorry. i know what i'm picturing but it's kind of hard to explain :) If anyone has any ideas for the walls, let me know.

Paige's Room

Finally I took a picture of Paigee's finished "headboard"

BNSF Day At The Zoo

On Saturday we spent the day together at the zoo. It was so fun. And Free! We had a catered lunch and a close-up animal show. While they were showing the animals they asked for volunteers. Zoe got picked and she was so excited. (She didn't know that it was going to be a huge frog!) The host told Zoe he was curious about what would happen if she kissed it. Would it turn into a prince? He told Zoe on the count of three he wanted her to kiss it. He counted and then she was totally going to do it! The host stopped her just in the nick of time. :) He was laughing and said that out of all the many shows he has done she was only one of a few who was actually going to do it. Silly girl!

Some more pics:


One of the kids favorite places is the reptile room. They love looking at the picture of the critter and then trying to find it in it's enclosure. Kind of like a scary, creepy Where's Waldo. It was a really good day. The weather was perfect, we were with good family and saw lots of old friends. The kids were entertained and we didn't break the bank. :) Thanks BNSF!!!

Ever seen a puking pumpkin?

This was my centerpiece for my table at pictionary. It didn't quite have the effect I was going for, but it was still pretty funny!

This was a major project!

Before (I forgot to take a picture before I took all the drawers out):

After one coat of paint:
After:
It was all worth it, I really like it now! It actually wasn't that big a deal once I got started. It would've only taken 2 days, but of course I ran out of paint in the middle of it.

***

Here is another one of my recent crafts. This was a Super Saturday craft that I brought home and did. On the back it is painted red and says "Believe" with a few accent stars.

I love these boxes! They are made of a really sturdy plastic and I found them at Home Depot for $6.00. :)

mini pumpkin tarts

I needed to try out a recipe I'm thinking of using for pictionary, so last night the girls and I made these:

They were really, really easy! Next time I make them they will be even easier too. Last night I used refrigerated pie crusts. We just cut out circles using cups, and then baked them in a muffin pan. For pictionary I am going to use the mini fillo dough shells. All I will have to do then is let them defrost on my counter. Here is the recipe:

1 15 oz. can of pumpkin

2 cups cool whip

1 t. pumpkin pie spice

1 box cheesecake pudding mix

3 15 count packs of fillo dough mini shells

Mix together pumpkin, cool whip and spice with a whisk until smooth, add in pudding mix and continue whisking until slightly thickened. Put your mixture into a Ziploc bag, snip off a corner and pipe into shells. Top with a dollop of cool whip and a sprinkling of the pumpkin pie spice, and you're done.

My Halloween Mantle

I love decorating for fall and Halloween! I usually have a big flower picture up in the easel, but I realized it didn't go to good with my "scary stuff", so I painted this jack-o-lantern on an old canvas that I had. I think he turned out pretty cute. Miles calls him Happy. :) I got the spider at Michael's and I love him. He's pose-able and he just sticks onto my big metal scrolly thing. Thanks Tiffany for your skills with the spider web placement!